The Driving Question

“How can we use storytelling to investigate what sparked global exploration and understand its impact?” Our latest humanities project was about the age of exploration. We learned about trade between countries as well as the fur trade between the Europeans and Indigenous.

The Age of Exploration

So what is the age of exploration? Let me explain…The age of exploration is a time where people from different nations discovered that they could trade with different countries around the world. A good thing about it is that people then discovered new technology like the Sextant, Cross staff, compass, astrolabe and a ship called the caravel. A consequence of that was that the Europeans created the fur trade where they would go to the indigenous lands and trade things like blankets, knives, and spices in exchange for beaver skins that they would use to make hats. This meant that the beaver population started to die off and there weren’t many beavers left in the wild. Luckily people started to set up beaver reserves and slowly the beaver populations started to grow again.

The Cause and Consequences of Exploration

we learned about things that were good about exploration and things that were bad and that didn’t work out like how even though they were getting gold and silver so they could sell it to other countries to make money, it started to drain the land of all those resources until there wasn’t much left. We had to make our boards on a website called padlet.

Story Mountain

After reading and learning about the age of exploration we had to make up a story based off of what we had learnt. We had to write about a cause and a consequence of exploration, that is why we made the padlet. We had to make a story mountain about our story’s and we had to separate it into sections like the “Climax and the Rising Action.” I wrote about the diseases that spread as a consequence and about how trading with other nations was the cause. I wrote about a girl named Lily who really wants to sail around the world and trade with other countries and nations, but everyone tells her she can’t because she’s a girl.

My Story

This story is kind of long so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to but here it is:

There once was a girl named Lily she always wanted to go on voyages but girls weren’t allowed to everyone said that they had to stay home and cool and look after their husbands.

She would stare longingly at the waves looking at the glistening waves in the sunshine. Lily was very sad because she wasn’t allowed to trade so she spent day after day looking out at sea waiting for her adventure to start. 

She had always wanted to travel, she knew it was in her blood because her father was a famous European explorer who went on many voyages a year. He always brought things back for Lily from his voyages but Lily knew it wasn’t the same. She would tell people all around town about her ideas for new technology and new ships, but no one would listen to her and when they did they would give her all the reasons why she couldn’t do it.

Lily loved to talk about traveling and she loved to talk to people about her fathers voyages and how she would always want to explore with him and go with him to trade with the indigenous peoples. She would always ask her father about his voyages when he wasn’t busy and Lily always said she could taste the salt water on her tongue. The idea of going on a ship and exploring the world gives Lily shivers in her spine and not in a bad way but in a good way. 

One day Lily heard that her father was traveling to the indigenous land to trade with the indigenous peoples and so Lily snuck onto the ship and disguised as one of the curfew members. Lily knew that woman weren’t allowed to travel so she dressed up as a man so her father and his crew wouldn’t know. Lily had many ideas for new technology that could help explorers navigate their way around the ocean and she kept it all in her sketchbook. She had never shown any body her ideas and she had always wanted to show her father but she couldn’t, not yet, but she would one day.

One day Lily was working on the ship deck and she saw land! She shouted for her father to come and see and she didn’t realize how close she was to the side of the ship and she fell right in and her disguise came off and everyone realized that it was her. Her father was very mad but they had reached land and then her father was distracted by all the trading. Lily had a great time trading with all the indigenous and she traded them blankets for beaver skins.

After a couple days the indigenous started to come down with a strange disease and then many of them started to die. The indigenous started to blame the Europeans for spreading the disease through their blankets. Lily was very scared and she didn’t want to leave because she had had such a great time trading and she had made many new friends. 

Although Lily had one of the most greatest time of her life she felt guilty that the indigenous had all started to die and she blamed it all on herself. Her father told her not to worry and then she realized the time was right and she showed him all her ideas for new technology that could help explorers navigate their way around the ocean. Her father told her it was a great idea and he told all of Europe and the rest of the world and they started to create all her ideas. Lily realized that her dream had finally come through and everyone had started to respect her and let her explore the world and Lily became one of the most famous European explorers in the world.

AR MAKR

AR MAKR is an app we used to film our story’s. In this app you can film things like a normal camera but you don’t have to place real life objects on the ground on front of the camera like on the normal filing apps. In this app you can take photos from your library and place them on the ground. It will look like you are placing a real life object on the ground from the screen, but from the outside it looks like your filming the ground so it can look kind of funny!😂

Pirate Packs!

Because we were studying the age of exploration we got to have pirate packs from Whitespot on the second last day of school before the break! It was lots of fun and we played Kahoots on Pirates and Vikings. We also had a competition on who could assemble their pirate pack the quickest! I had lots of fun and I won the grand prize in the end, a massive chocolate coin!

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun in this project and I learnt so much about the age of exploration that I know I am going to remember for the rest of my life. I liked working with AR MAKR even if it was a little frustrating at times I still had fun learning about it and working with it. I am sure that I will use this app for many years to come and I can’t wait to make even more story’s with it! This has been one of my most favourites projects yet! I really enjoyed doing it and I even enjoyed the homework!😁